Hands on with the Xperia XZ

The minute you put your hands on the Sony Xperia XZ you are reminded of the premium feel of the Xperia Z series phones. The Xperia XZ is a flagship in the true sense and Sony has launched it as a replacement of the Xperia Z5 which is a good thing.

The in-hand feel of the handset is brilliant thanks to the use of the new material called Alkaleido, which allows the phone to be a lot more robust than traditional aluminium chassis’ and is less prone to damage.

The premium build handset from Sony also features IP68 water resistance much like the Samsung Galaxy S7 or Note 7 and is also completely sand proof. The Sony Xperia XZ is the only smartphone from the company launched this year with that certification.

The display on the Sony Xperia XZ is just a Full HD 1920 x 1080px resolution display but has great colour and brightness and is easily viewable indoors and outdoors. The viewing angles on the screen are great too.

The phone runs Android 6.0.1 with a beta software at the moment so we did see some glitches and issues with the software builds. Sony has assured that the final retail units will come with a finished user interface.

The camera which is the hero features 5 axis image stabalization and 4k video recording. You also get subject tracking and predictive autofocus, which works great. However, getting around the camera menu and UI is a little mind boggling and to shoot 4k video you need to jump into a specific app.

Hopefully Sony updates the camera software in a coming update, because it needs much work to leverage the many features that this great camera hardware has. Sony has cleaned up the UI to quite an extent and you can disable the non wanted apps from the UI. The overall software seems snappy.

Battery is a low 2900 mAh, however bundled with quick charge 3.0 so that you can easily get a few hours of talk time in 10-15 minutes of charging via the USB Type-C port. The phone works over 4G on both SIM-cards and has VoLTE, we however were not able to test it just as yet.

All three colours of the Xperia XZ look great and feel great in the hand, the back is easy to wipe clean and the front houses a curved Gorilla Glass 4 which will deliver the needed frontal protection.